Pub landlady wins TV football court case: a crucial insight into EU law

You might reasonably believe that a legal squabble about screening Sky football matches in the pub had little to do with Business Studies. But in fact the recent ruling sheds a clear light on the single most important feature of the European Union to UK businesses.

The court case arose over the fact that the pub was using a TV decoder to access a Greek TV station (which has the rights to screen the English Premier League at a cost to the pub of £800 a year) instead of using Sky, for which it costs £700 a month to show Premier League matches to pub audiences.

The pub landlady argued that this arrangement breaks EU law, and the judges agreed. How come?

It’s all because the EU exists to prevent this kind of situation arising. To UK business, the key purpose of the EU is to create and police a Single Market. That means no other EU countries can put up restrictions to British goods or services being sold there. In the same way, it should mean that no firm or government can stop UK households from buying goods and services that are legally on sale in other member states. That’s the theory anyway.

Legal boffins can read more background to this in the Cassis de Dijon case, which is a central plank of EU law. It established that there are no valid reasons why a product that is lawfully marketed in one member state should not be introduced in another member state.

This case (and many others like it) is not closed yet, but it is likely to trigger a major shake-up in the way football TV rights are sold, and potentially pave the way to cheaper viewing of foreign broadcasts for fans of top-flight English games, according to the BBC.